Prisoner held in hit man sting

He tried to hire someone to kill a teen, police say

April 17, 2008|BY SOFIA SANTANA STAFF WRITER

FORT LAUDERDALE — Authorities have arrested a local man on charges he tried to hire someone to kill a teen he met online and allegedly raped in 2005.

Police say Bobby Minnis, 45, believed that if the teen could not testify in his trial next week, the case would be dismissed. Minnis was arrested on a warrant Tuesday and faces new charges of solicitation to commit murder and conspiracy to commit murder, police said Wednesday.

Minnis, of Fort Lauderdale, tried to arrange for the killing from the county jail cell, where he's been since his April 2005 arrest on lewd and lascivious battery charges, officials said. Minnis flew to Austin, Texas, to pick up the youth, who was 14 at the time, and then drove back to Minnis' home, where the attacks took place, police said.

Minnis was living in the Coral Ridge area with his wife and two children, police said. Earlier this month, Minnis contacted someone he thought was a hit man, but really was a Fort Lauderdale police officer working undercover, officials said.

It's a tactic that has helped South Florida police make close to a dozen arrests in recent years.

The undercover Fort Lauderdale officer recorded several phone conversations with Minnis in which he said he would pay $10,000 to $12,000 for the killing, according to police. Minnis also wanted the hit man to leave a fake suicide note for the teen's parents to find and for the killer to make sure the victim's body was never found, authorities said.

"Defendant said he just needed this done by the 17th, for he figured they would be flying the victim in for the trial probably on the 18th," the undercover officer wrote in an arrest report. "Defendant told me that he has some deals to do when he gets out so he can pay me right away and that what I am doing is saving his life."

Minnis' court-appointed attorney, Bob Nichols of Fort Lauderdale, is skeptical of the early reports, saying police were tipped off by a jail informant who might not be reliable.

"You have to be careful," he said.

Nichols added that the new charges, once formally filed, may end up delaying Minnis' trial for the 2005 case, which is scheduled to start Monday.

Minnis is charged with 10 counts of lewd and lascivious battery and one count of interfering with custody. Authorities say Minnis and the teen had sex 10 times over a four-day period and that it was against the teen's will.

In April 2005, police arrested Minnis as he left his home with the teen, who was immediately taken to the Sexual Assault Treatment Center in Fort Lauderdale.

The Law Enforcement Against Child Harm Task Force, commonly known as LEACH and made up of local, state and federal law enforcement officers, got involved in the case after the teen was reported missing from Texas. LEACH investigators tracked the teen's computer records and learned that Minnis and the teen had communicated online for about a year, officials said at the time.

The task force makes major arrests almost weekly, police reports show. Many of the cases involve adults accused of traveling long distances to meet with children they chatted with on the Internet.

The problem is enormous. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that, based on a study it conducted in 2006, about one in seven children ages 10 to 17 have been solicited for sex while using the Internet.

Sofia Santana can be reached at svsantana@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4631.

INFORMATIONAL BOX:

LAW OFFICERS POSING AS HIT MEN

Authorities in Palm Beach and Broward c-ounties have successfully posed as hit men, with the tactic leading to several arrests in recent years:

In February 2007, Marc Benayer, 81, tried to have his lawyer, James Eisenberg of West Palm Beach, killed, authorities said. At the time Benayer was awaiting trial on charges he fatally shot a worshiper in 2005 at a Rosh Hashana synagogue service west of Boca Raton. Benayer laid out the murder plot for an undercover investigator who worked with the Palm Beach County Violent Crimes Task Force, officials said. Benayer is serving a life sentence for the synagogue shooting as he awaits trial on the murder plot charges.

In October 2005, a Wellington man tried to have his wife killed to avoid a $2.5 million divorce settlement. Glenn Sandler, 55, had tried to pay an undercover Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputy $25,000 to do the killing, authorities said. Sandler pleaded guilty and was sentenced in June to 15 years in prison.

In August 2004, Arthur Sosnowsky, 52, hired an undercover Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputy to kill a man he had wounded months earlier. Sosnowsky pleaded guilty and was sentenced in April 2007 to a 10-year prison term, to run concurrently with the 40-year sentence Sosnowsky received for the earlier shooting.

In October 2003, Chi Luu Linville, 60, of Loxahatchee, was charged with trying to have a Palm Beach County animal control officer killed. Linville, who is mentally ill, was angry that the officer banned her from keeping any animals. Linville hired an undercover Palm Beach County Sheriff's detective who posed as a hit-man. Linville was convicted in March 2005, but shortly after was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her initial 50-month prison sentence was reduced and she is serving three years under house arrest.

In April 2003, Manuel Castro, then 76, was charged with plotting to kill his ex-wife, of Pembroke Pines, because he wanted the satisfaction of outliving her. A federal agent posed as a hit man. Castro was sentenced in October 2004 to 30 years in prison.